The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club (16 page)

The Candy Apple
Freak Show

“Sun’s up,” my friend Jamie said as she, our friend Krysti, and I zoomed down the highway last week, heading for Pasadena and a day of shopping. “Time to eat!”

I was starving, too, and my appetite was for a big, fat candy apple that I always get in Old Town Pasadena when we go there. It’s the best candy apple in the world. First, they dip a beautiful green apple in gooey, homemade caramel, then they dip it in white chocolate, roll it in Oreo cookie bits, AND THEN they drizzle
more
white chocolate all the way around it. It’s heaven on a stick, and the only thing that could make me love it more would be if it were laced with Fen-Phen.

The vision of that candy apple kept dancing in my head, all gooey, crunchy, and nearly nutritious because of the apple part.

“I’m getting a rumbly in my tumbly,” I hinted. “There’s a candy apple in Old Town just calling my name! I can feel it.”

Jamie and Krysti just looked at each other. “Forget it,” they almost said in unison. “When we do get to Old Town, you’d better not get any big ideas about eating it when you’re standing next to us. We don’t want to be a part of your Candy Apple Freak Show!”

I gasped. “I thought I could trust you!” I cried. “I
knew
I shouldn’t have told either one of you about the Candy Apple Incident! It wasn’t a
freak show,
I said it was a freak
accident
!”

The Candy Apple Incident happened a few months ago when I was shopping and ran into a candy factory. There, in the window, was a shiny green apple wrapped in caramel and then rolled in Oreo cookie bits. It couldn’t have been more perfect if my name had been written on it in white chocolate. It was mine, though I decided not to eat it until I got home, so I could savor its beauty in private, where that kind of love belongs.

Heading back to the freeway, I spotted a branch of my bank and decided to deposit a check I had in my purse, so I pulled into the packed drive-thru line and waited. As I was waiting, I looked at the candy apple glistening on the passenger seat. I picked it up by the top of the bag, turned it all the way around, looking at it, admiring it, then tore the cellophane bag off like an animal and sunk my big buck front teeth into it.

And then couldn’t get them back out. You see, I had not prepared my toothy lunge with the correct leverage and had plunged my fangs into something of an apple abyss with no way to get them out.

They were stuck.

“Ehhh! Ehhh!” I grunted as I tussled with the apple, trying to pull it down, but not with too much force because my gums bleed already, and I was afraid that instead of ripping my teeth out of the apple, I’d rip my teeth out of my gums instead.

“EH MEH GAAA!” I cried (translation without the candy apple lodged in my mouth: “Oh my god!”) as I struggled, wiggling the candy apple stick to no avail. Then I had an idea. I opened up my jaw as wide as I could, figuring that if I could bite into the apple with my lower teeth, I could scrape up the inside of the apple and free my tusks that way.

I bit in. Hard. As soon as I did, however, I realized I had made a serious mistake when a wave of pain hit me and I understood that I had just pulled a big, fat, uncooperative muscle in both my face and neck and I was temporarily paralyzed.

“AHHHH! AHHHH!” I screamed in agony as I put my foot on the brake and clawed at the apple with both hands. As I wrestled with it, a massive chunk of the apple finally flew off and freed me, but the chunk was so large it wouldn’t even fit in my mouth. I tried to chew it as apple juice streamed down my chin, as little bits fell from my chops, and that was when I looked over and found a mother-and-son team staring at me from their white Econoline van in the next lane, their jaws completely dropped in stupor.

What could I do? I just kept chewing and waved.

I adjusted the rearview mirror so I could wipe the juice off, and that’s when I saw myself. Smears of cookie crumbs, apple juice, and caramel were all over my face, on my chin, on my nose, on my neck. One smudge almost went all the way to my ear. As I tried to wipe it off with the cellophane bag, I noticed the people in the van again, but this time they were laughing at me. The mom reached up and wiped her eyes.

I decided right then and there that I would avoid a future Candy Apple Incident by carrying a fork and knife with me at all times, and I was trying to tell Jamie and Krysti this as we parked the car in Old Town. They, however, were having none of it.

“No way, Lockjaw,” Krysti said. “Who knows what you would do with weapons. You could stick one of us with the knife when we pointed out you had cookie crumbs stuck in your nostrils.”

“And stab the other one with a fork when we pointed out that you kind of looked like a barbecued pig with a giant apple stuck in your mouth,” Jamie added. “Sometimes I think if a caseworker from social services evaluated you, you could totally qualify for disability.”

“Really?” I said, trying hard not to get my hopes up.

We passed the candy apple store, and as Jamie and Krysti waited outside, I went in and got my treat. The candy apple people wrapped it in a pretty cellophane bag and tied it with a ribbon.

It was beautiful. I held it up in the light so that we could all admire its majesty, as I twirled it on the stick to get a full, circular view.

“What’s that?” Krysti said as she pointed to an aberration on the apple that seemed to be a big, thick, white fleck of coconut.

“Hmmm,” Jamie said, studying it carefully. “Looks like you have some competition. But whoever put on that Candy Apple Freak Show is missing a tooth!”

More Bread,
Please

We saw them through the window of the front of the restaurant as we were waiting for a table.

They were glistening, they were steaming, they were slightly browned on top.

They were tiny little rolls swathed in butter and garlic.

Heaven on a platter.

“I can’t stop looking at them,” I confessed to my friend Jamie as I pressed my face against the glass. “Do you think if I asked the people at that table, they’d give me one?”

“Ask for two,” she insisted.

“Excuse me,” the hostess said, pointing to us. “You two!”

“Us?” Jamie replied. “Is our table ready?”

“No,” she answered sharply. “Stop drooling on that window, you are
scaring
people!”

Being that we were at an ultrahip restaurant in Los Angeles—around the corner from Jamie’s new apartment—catering to the ultracool, we were already at a severe disadvantage. Despite the fact that we had bypassed our regular uniform of overalls and hiking boots, we were still slightly underdressed, having left our chunky-heeled, purple suede hip-high boots and turbo breast implants at home. I noticed the difference between “us” and “them” the minute we walked up to the front door.

“Are you sure this is the restaurant?” I asked Jamie as she gave her keys to the valet. “No one here weighs over one hundred pounds. Either this is a casting call for
Scream 15,
or these are the prettiest homeless people I’ve ever seen.”

The hostess, sporting a headset
and
a walkie-talkie, sure was in a hurry to inform us of the hour-and-a-half wait until Jamie mentioned that we had a reservation.

“You can wait over there until your table is ready,” she said, pointing outside.

After we shuffled back through the door, I spotted the rolls on the other side of the glass that was the promised land. Then the hostess yelled at us and called our name.

“Follow me,” she said as she approached us in her clickety-click chunky shoes.

Jamie and I trailed her meekly to our table and sat down.

“I want rolls,” I stated immediately. “Lots and lots of rolls.”

BING! As if the Guardian Angel of Hot Breads and Starches had heard my prayer, a little dish with six shiny rolls popped up on our table.

“Six?” Jamie and I exclaimed together. “That’s not enough! That’s only three apiece! What do we look like,
models
?”

The waiter showed up, sneered at us, then took our order. At the last minute, I decided we absolutely had to have the roasted garlic bulb to accompany the tiny bread delights. I realized it was a silly move once the waiter left, and I was face-to-face with the two surviving rolls on the white plate.

“There’s not enough bread for the garlic,” Jamie said with wide, panicked eyes. “There is NOT ENOUGH!”

“Don’t fear,” I said as I waved at a busboy and got his attention. “More bread, please!”

BING! Another white plate appeared on the table, and this time, it was a proverbial MOUNTAIN of rolls. Rolls lining the dish. Rolls piled on top of rolls. Rolls falling off the plate. Rolls tumbling onto the table.

“It’s like winning the lottery!” we gasped breathlessly.

Jamie picked one up and popped it into her mouth.

“Don’t eat them now!” I cried. “Wait for the garlic!”

“There are thirty of them here,” she replied and ate another one.

A second later, the roasted garlic bulb appeared in our waiter’s hands—surrounded by thirty more rolls.

He stopped after he placed the new dish on the table and looked at us.

“You got more . . .
rolls,
” he said snootily with a little shake of his head.

We stopped chewing, looked at him, and nodded. In fact, our table was covered now with nothing
but
plates of rolls.

“Why, it’s the Attack of the Carbohydrate Women,” he said without a smile as he left.

“He hates us! HURRY!” I hissed, pushing a plate toward Jamie. “We have to eat them all! You take that mound, I’ll take this one!”

We were trying to chew really fast, like two chews per roll and swallow, and were halfway done with the second plate of rolls when we noticed that all the waiters that passed by our table were glancing at us and laughing. Some were stopping by just to look at the spectacle. Our waiter came back by to deliver our dinners and asked if he could bring us anything else.

“More bread, please,” I said as I chewed, but he didn’t think that was very funny.

“He hates us,” Jamie confirmed as she ate another roll.

The hostess swung around and handed us a lyric sheet just as Dean Martin began to belt out “That’s Amore” over the speakers, which everyone, including the clientele, started singing along to. The waiters, each holding a small glass of wine, took the cue and began toasting people at each table. We watched as our waiter gaily clicked glasses with the folks at the surrounding tables, then the tables in the general vicinity, then with the people far to the front.

“He won’t toast with us!” Jamie pouted, holding her glass of iced tea up, just waiting for him to come by and grace us. “He despises us!”

“No,” I disagreed. “He LOATHES us.”

We spotted him moving back toward the center of the restaurant, laughing and clinking glasses with normal people who were satisfied with one plate of rolls.

The song ended, Jamie sorrowfully put her glass back down on the table, and a busboy immediately filled it back up to the brim.

Suddenly, our waiter was gliding back past our table when he turned, and in an action of complete pity and probably hoping that we might somehow scrounge enough change off the bottom of our purses to give him more than a 10 percent tip, raised his glass toward Jamie and swooped in for the kill.

She quickly fumbled for her glass, and I could see the joy on her face. She, at least, had been redeemed; she was worthy. She had been picked last for the team, but it hardly mattered. She picked up her glass, albeit a little too quickly in her undisguised jubilance. Her iced tea rushed toward his wine with the fury of a speeding train and not understanding the energy and fuel the rolls had provided, she rammed her glass into his with a loud crack as the contents of both exploded and soaked his sleeve and the entire table.

He looked at her, wiped a droplet of iced tea from his chin, and said quietly, “I’ll get a towel.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” I said, reaching for one of the numerous white plates on the table. “We’ll just use these rolls.”

Nothing but
a Smile

It was my first real day at the new gym, since I had been blackballed from the community college fitness center when they found out I smoked. Eager to start a new habit that would shrink my butt from a couch to a love seat, I was going to begin exercising. I had just opened my locker and had slapped on the new lock I had bought at Target the day before, when it happened.

She walked by me, then headed toward a bench across the aisle. Standing in front of me was a naked lady, fresh from the shower.

A completely naked lady.

With no clothes on.

I don’t even know what my first instinct was. I don’t think I had one. All I knew was that a naked lady was standing in front of me, and I was staring at her being naked.

I guess I just couldn’t believe it. I had never really seen a naked lady before, except for one time when I was five, and my mom let our hippie neighbor, Honey, take me shopping with her and her five-year-old daughter. Honey took both of us into the dressing room with her, and before I knew what was happening, there was Honey’s left “lentil” just hanging there, wide out in the open. I looked at Honey’s daughter, who didn’t seem too bothered by it, but personally, I was horrified. I was five AND I was a Catholic. The whole thing was just DIRTY. I felt as if I had just witnessed something unholy and shameful, and I never told anyone that filthy secret, not even at confession, until just now. I’m sorry that I kept this from you, Mom, but it’s true. I saw Honey’s lentil.

I felt dirty then, and I felt dirty now. It was happening all over, but not only were there lentils, there were things my mother never taught me the names of, but then again, I was a little sheltered. Until I was a junior in high school, my mom insisted that the Kotex pads under the bathroom sink were special sponges she used to clean the toilet.

The naked lady, now bending over to dry her legs off, was showing me a whole other view, like her marshmallows.

“Just what is going on here?” is what I wanted to say to the naked lady, because I didn’t know this woman. I had no business seeing her NAKED, especially since there was a bathroom stall several feet away. I had no right, and, furthermore, I had no idea when I paid for my gym membership that I had also joined a nudist colony.

Who could be that free? I thought. Who could be that free that they could just strut around “in all candor” in front of other people? Who has that much self-esteem that they could bare it all and not burst into tears? I mean, I have trouble walking from the bath mat to the shower without any clothes on, let alone put on a show for a bunch of strangers. My bra doesn’t come off until the sun goes down, and that’s the law. I feel perverted if my dog catches a glimpse of me in all my glory, let alone someone I’ve never even met. When I have to go to the gynecologist, I have to practice sitting on the edge of my bed with no pants on for a week before my appointment, just to get ready.

Obviously, the naked lady had no such problems. I didn’t know what to do, and I was so freaked out that I forgot the combination to my new lock. I went home and called my mother.

“You saw a streaker?” my mother said from the other end of the phone. “That is just disgusting. And there was a bathroom stall five feet away? Some people are raised like animals, barnyard animals! They never heard of Sodom and Gomorrah?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head.

“When your sister and I joined that gym last year,” she continued, “there were so many of them walking around that I just had to stop going. It was like a topless bar! I felt like I should be handing out dollar bills! ‘Here’s one for you, here’s one for you . . .’ The last thing I need is to see strangers’ lentils! How do I tell that to a priest? You should just stay home and run in place like I do.”

Then my sister got on the phone. “Once, when I was in the locker room, I met a friend of mine that owed me money for a lunch, and she wrote me a check right then and there. Completely naked.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I cashed the check and bought a Tae-Bo videotape,” my sister replied. “And I run in place when no one else is home. I can’t go to the gym anymore. There’s so many naked people around that I feel like I’m in a porno movie. And as for my friend, well . . . I can’t eat lunch with someone like that. She can be wearing seven sweaters and a parka, but she’ll always be naked to me.”

When my boyfriend came home from work that night, he asked me about my first day at the gym, but I told him how the naked lady scared me so badly I had to go home.

“You thought she was dirty, didn’t you?” he said.

“Yes,” I answered. “Yes, I did.”

He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “So? It’s a gym, Laurie. People have to take showers. And you’re kind of . . . repressed. I can’t believe you’ve never seen a naked lady before.”

“Well,” I started, “it’s not like all of us girls go into the Gap dressing room, take off our clothes, and chase and tickle one another.”

“What about your family?” he suggested. “You never saw any of them naked?”

I gasped, sucking in a breath so hard it nearly knocked me backward. “We’re a very careful people,” I said slowly. “We don’t believe in naked!”

“It’s very normal to be naked in the locker room,” my boyfriend said, trying to calm me. “If you go back, you’re probably going to see more naked people.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not playing games with them,” I answered. “And I’m not wiping off anybody’s back!”

A couple days later, I got up enough courage to go back to the gym. I was getting ready to put my new lock on my locker when I heard an elderly, grandmotherly voice call out to me.

“Dear?” the voice said gently. “Young lady? Could you please help me? I’ve dropped my comb, and I can’t seem to reach it.”

“Oh, sure,” I said, noticing the comb on the ground.

I picked it up and started to hand it to her, but as I looked up into her sweet little grandmother face, I saw that the only thing she was wearing was a smile.